TY - JOUR
AU - Rockoff,Hugh
TI - On the Origins of "A Monetary History"
JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL - No. 12666
PY - 2006
Y2 - November 2006
DO - 10.3386/w12666
UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12666
L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12666.pdf
N1 - Author contact info:
Hugh Rockoff
Department of Economics
Rutgers University
75 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1248
E-Mail: rockoff@econ.rutgers.edu
AB - This paper explores some of the scholarship that influenced Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz's "A Monetary History". It shows that the ideas of several Chicago economists -- Henry Schultz, Henry Simons, Lloyd Mints, and Jacob Viner -- left clear marks. It argues, however, that the most important influence may have been Wesley Clair Mitchell and his classic book "Business Cycles" (1913). Mitchell, and the NBER, provided the methodology for "A Monetary History", in particular the emphasis on compiling long time series of monthly data and analyzing the effects of specific variables on the business cycle. A common methodology and the stability of monetary relationships produced similar conclusions about money. Friedman and Schwartz deemphasized Mitchell's "bank-centric" view of the monetary transmission process, but they reinforced Mitchell's conclusion that money had an independent, predictable, and important influence on the business cycle.
ER -